The Codex Metallicus: A guide to Mordekaiser.

The Codex Metallicus: A guide to Mordekaiser.

That mentality is not always healthy, but I suppose you get the idea.
Health is not always a good thing.

EDIT:
Yea, did the math:

you get 49 health per enemy with Siphon (not counting magic resist or AP)
4 per enemy per second with creeping death
5 per enemy hit with Mace (unless it's more than just the bonus damage that is magic)

However, make note that this is increased by Spirit Visage as far as I know

So, Healing to full is a slight exageration. However, you can still get a good amount of healing by popping creeping death and standing in a creep wave for a few seconds (about 24 health per second, actually if you get all six creeps, which is better than what you'll get with regeneration)

Add that to a massive regeneration, and it works rather well as a way to heal yourself.

Also, make note that the best part of guise is the magic penetration.

Is that 49 or 4.9? 49 would be a siphon that hit for over 900 :P
On the same count though, 24 health per second is only if you can stand in a creep wave, which puts you at some severe risk of ranged harassment, which will eat through your shield pretty quickly if you stand there and take it.

The mace costs 50 and will restore 20 health if you have 3 targets to take the bounces or a single target to take the full hit (200 bonus damage with single target vamp).

The siphon will give even health returns on a full creep wave.

All in all the item will provide no healing unless you are lucky enough to get a "mega creep wave" of 20-30 built up minions that you can pound on and heal off of, but those are few and far between and won't happen often in the laning phase. The heal component is negligible in lane because to use it you have to put yourself in the confrontation and take hits, which can be dangerous without using hit and run tactics so that all the hits you take are absorbed by your shield. Past the laning phase it's even more negligible because you won't be hitting more than 5 targets at a time.

The health is nice but there are better items for health. The AP is nothing of note, because all of his ratios are terrible (as established)

That makes the only thing worth noticing the magic pen, which is unimportant in my honest opinion.

Quote:

Every 1 armor means the damage it takes to kill you is extended by 1% of your hitpoints. At 100 armor, it takes 100% more damage to kill you, ie it requires double damage, ie you're taking half-damage. At 300 armor you're taking 25% damage, etc.

Magic resistance works in the exact same fashion, except it does so against spells only. There is no overlap between armor and magic resistance at all. (Ex. Having 500 Armor would have no impact on spells, having 500 Magic Resistance would have no impact on physical attacks)

Taken from the FAQ in the guides section.

So 20 magic pen means it will take you 20% less damage to kill your target.
Admirable yes, but you can look at that as a 20% increase to your magic spells, meaning that your siphon will do 306 instead of 255 on a target with 0 magic resist, right?

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Q: Can you reduce armor or magic resistance below 0?

A: Yes, although the only things that can reduce below 0 is Armor/MR Reduction. Both percentage and flat penetration do not have an effect after they get to 0 armor/MR.

Taken from the FAQ in the guides section.

So no. Your magic penetration will have no effect on targets at 0 magic resist, which means if you are fighting anyone with below 20 magic resist, you are wasting stats. Fiddles/Soraka/Anyone who gets an abyssal? wasted stats. Is the item worth it at 1400g for extremely negligible regen and 20 magic pen? Not in my opinion.

You'd be better off getting a spirit visage.
1350 vs 1485g, so you're saving money.
25 health per 5, in and out of combat, whether you have creeps nearby or not. At the same time it also increases the health regen you get from your ult, which can be life or death scenario in a team fight or when you are ganked by 3.
33 magic resist, which makes you 33% harder to kill vs magic damage.

And 12% cd reduction, which on siphon alone gives you a 6 dps increase, as well as increased survivability via shield, hitting your siphon more>>>>hitting harder for survivability.

That's my stance on haunting guise, it's an overrated item that isn't worth it at all on Mordekaiser.

All of them start at 30, and some of them scale per level, and the 6 from defensive mastery are popular points (not to mention blue runes).

Going from say, 36 magic resist to 4 (with runes masteries and guise) is a pretty big difference in damage.

No one is arguing that SV is bad, but morde's only ways to buff his damage in a serious manner (unless you're doing something like AD morde) are to get mpen and CDR. There is only 1 current appropriate CDR item (SV) and very few appropriate Mpen items.

And interestingly enough, you make some bad points.

Hitting your siphon more is better for survivability ONLY if you are hitting it for enough damage and on enough targets to mitigate its cost. On a single target with say 25 mres after masteries and runes, you will be spending more life than what it costs you to cast siphon, thus spamming siphon more frequently will be detrimental to your survival (but necessary to kill the enemy.)

Also, the healing from guise doesn't have to be on a "mega creep wave" to matter. Does the item have to heal you to full just to be useful? It mitigates the cost of the spell. And also the point about having to "put yourself into harms way" to benefit... seriously? If you aren't pushing as Morde you're doing it wrong. You should be casting every CD when there are enemies within range!

Anyway I don't think anyone is arguing that SV is a bad item (It's always my first Get) but to discount guise because it doesn't heal you to full is just silly.

Just to put things into some sort of mathematical perspective. Say you cycle your skills every 6 seconds (roughly) and you hit 4 enemies with siphon, 4 with mace, (even ignoring creeping death) You will get 49 health from siphon, 36 from mace. That's 85 health over those 6 seconds. That's 70 hp/5.

Sure, I admit it's only in combat, but that's also ignoring creeping death. It's an amount of regen that shouldn't be dismissed as useless.

minimal waste on mana items, some move speed and survivability, and some heavy AP with some decent penetration and slows. Keep in mind this isn't in order or anything just my musings on the subject.

You would have a total of 650 ability power, meaning your siphons on a 5 something second cd would do 580 aoe damge, your shield would do 1080 damage to anyone who got caught in the full 6 seconds next to you, and considering you would slow them they probably would. Your mace of spades would hit for AD+200+650 on a single target.

As powerful as that sounds, it doesn't compare to true casters with 650 AP.

Then we take into account his ult. 650AP would give your ult a 1.3% increase on draining. Which is roughly a 40% increase in draining. But on the same note, 1.3% for 8 seconds is an extra 10.4% drained. So your ult would do a total of 42.4$ of someone's health.

On someone with 2k health, that 10.4% increase is roughly 200 health, or a .3 ratio of AP. But on a tank with 3k health, that becomes a .5 ratio.

It'd be fun to try to roflstomp pubs with on a smurf, but not that powerful overall.

I rarely go Thornmail on Mord... he has so much armor the way that i build him that the reflected damage ends up being extremely low.

This is a great guide though. Haunting Guise is good just for the Magic Pen; it's one of the cheapest magic penetration options in the game. The health and AP are just little bonuses that I consider gimmes over the extra damage.

Spirit Visage and Warden's Mail are usually my two first picks in a game. Mordekaiser doesn't need any additional damage at all early on; the extra survivability is all you need to completely dominate.

All of them start at 30, and some of them scale per level, and the 6 from defensive mastery are popular points (not to mention blue runes).

Going from say, 36 magic resist to 4 (with runes masteries and guise) is a pretty big difference in damage.

No one is arguing that SV is bad, but morde's only ways to buff his damage in a serious manner (unless you're doing something like AD morde) are to get mpen and CDR. There is only 1 current appropriate CDR item (SV) and very few appropriate Mpen items.

Morde isn't a dps, it isn't his job to do his damage. And I believe I listed times when the only reason the item is worth buying would go to waste would be when you had a soraka/fiddles/ryze/abyssal scepter on your team.

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And interestingly enough, you make some bad points.

Hitting your siphon more is better for survivability ONLY if you are hitting it for enough damage and on enough targets to mitigate its cost. On a single target with say 25 mres after masteries and runes, you will be spending more life than what it costs you to cast siphon, thus spamming siphon more frequently will be detrimental to your survival (but necessary to kill the enemy.)

Also, the healing from guise doesn't have to be on a "mega creep wave" to matter. Does the item have to heal you to full just to be useful? It mitigates the cost of the spell. And also the point about having to "put yourself into harms way" to benefit... seriously? If you aren't pushing as Morde you're doing it wrong. You should be casting every CD when there are enemies within range!

You seem to be confused. Very confused. Hitting siphon for survivability more is better if you get 5 targets with it and max your shield. Anything over that is overkill. On a tank, getting more items to increase your damage isn't a good idea. The healing from guise is negligible. Completely. Do you max your creeping death first? In the build recommended in this guide (and mostly the one everyone takes to my knowledge) you don't even get a second level of creeping death till level 8. So up until then your creeping death will heal you for a total of 10 hp if you can hit all 6 creeps for all 6 seconds. You can mitigate the cost of the spell and regen health via health regen, and do it better.

And if you don't understand what I mean by playing hit and run with morde, you are doing it extremely wrong, like a couple of gay ******s with bruised bellybuttons. Your shield is weak early, it absorbs a couple hits. If you sit like a moron in a creep wave slowly sucking away health with your ****ty little shield, you aren't pushing, you are tanking the creeps and your enemies. Morde isn't a tank early game, he can harass well, but he can't go 1v1 with most champions without a creep wave to shield off of. You don't play mordekaiser by autoattack pushing, you cast your spells and back off. If you sit there autoattack pushing, your enemies will eat through your shield in two hits, then proceed to rape you and pass you along for sloppy seconds.

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Anyway I don't think anyone is arguing that SV is a bad item (It's always my first Get) but to discount guise because it doesn't heal you to full is just silly.

Just to put things into some sort of mathematical perspective. Say you cycle your skills every 6 seconds (roughly) and you hit 4 enemies with siphon, 4 with mace, (even ignoring creeping death) You will get 49 health from siphon, 36 from mace. That's 85 health over those 6 seconds. That's 70 hp/5.

Sure, I admit it's only in combat, but that's also ignoring creeping death. It's an amount of regen that shouldn't be dismissed as useless.

You hit 4 enemies with mace, and you get 20 health back at level 5. Changes it to 46 hp/5, if you can cycle your abilities every 6 seconds. Every 6 seconds. As opposed to the 25 health regen/5 (not including SV to keep things fair) you can get from Warden's mail for less money.

Let's look at a combat scenario. You are in a team fight and being focused. You can stay and hit them and your regen MAY slightly overtake the damage you deal or you can run away and your REAL regen will help you survive.

It's not an effective means of health regen beyond the laning phase, and it's only slightly better than mediocre in the laning phase.

Isn't the damage that's reflected what would have been don before mitigation? I read in one of these threads that it also reflected damage that is _dodged_

I thought it reflected only a percentage of the actual damage inflicted on you. If it's pre-mitigation damage, then this might actually be a really tight item against physical DPS teams: the 100 armor is a HUGE amount of physical damage reduction, and the reflection is even better.

Morde isn't a dps, it isn't his job to do his damage. And I believe I listed times when the only reason the item is worth buying would go to waste would be when you had a soraka/fiddles/ryze/abyssal scepter on your team.

You hit 4 enemies with mace, and you get 20 health back at level 5. Changes it to 46 hp/5, if you can cycle your abilities every 6 seconds. Every 6 seconds. As opposed to the 25 health regen/5 (not including SV to keep things fair) you can get from Warden's mail for less money.

Let's look at a combat scenario. You are in a team fight and being focused. You can stay and hit them and your regen MAY slightly overtake the damage you deal or you can run away and your REAL regen will help you survive.

It's not an effective means of health regen beyond the laning phase, and it's only slightly better than mediocre in the laning phase.

Aside from the fact that you are wrong on many points I will just adress your horrible horrible math.

Combining those two, you are gaining 85 health every 6 seconds (you could realistically do it faster if you had CDR, which you should have...) That works out to 72 hp/5. Last I checked, that's roughly thrice the effective regen of wardens mail?

If you're relying on running away, you're playing morde wrong because a) he has no escape skills, b) he is slow. Either you will get away because they don't chase you, or they focus you and you die despite trying to run away. Who cares if you have 100 more hps by the time you get to your fountain?

And if you think you don't need to do damage as morde... lol. Have fun being ignored. A Morde that does nothing to increase their damage output is a detriment to the team as they don't bring anything else to the table such as CC.

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Originally Posted by Veraticus

I thought it reflected only a percentage of the actual damage inflicted on you. If it's pre-mitigation damage, then this might actually be a really tight item against physical DPS teams: the 100 armor is a HUGE amount of physical damage reduction, and the reflection is even better.

I find deathfire grasp/ignite/ult very effective in killing people (people with out cleanse) as an AP/Tank mord. I know it has mana regen but I like using it with his spells to burst them down and kill them quickly.

I only use this item if I get solo though because of the farming and level advantage.